Supplier of 'The Clear' pleads guilty in BALCO steroid case

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, April 29, 2006

A Midwestern chemist who created "The Clear," the undetectable designer drug at the heart of the BALCO steroid scandal, pleaded guilty Friday to a charge of conspiring to distribute steroids.

Patrick Arnold, 39, an executive with a nutritional supplements laboratory in Champaign, Ill., is likely to serve three months in prison and three months of house arrest under terms of a plea bargain described at a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Judge Susan Illston set Aug. 4 for sentencing.

Arnold was accused of creating three steroid-like drugs that had been synthesized to be undetectable on state-of-the-art doping tests that elite athletes must pass to be eligible to compete. The most famous was "The Clear," also known as THG, which, according to court records, was distributed to Giants slugger Barry Bonds, New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi, Olympic track star Marion Jones, and other elite athletes who were customers of the Burlingame-based Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.

In court Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Nedrow said that Arnold also had synthesized another designer steroid known as DMT, and that he manufactured and marketed a third drug, Norbolethone, which had been created in the 1960s but never put on the market.

Sports authorities didn't test athletes for the substances because they didn't know about them until research by scientists at the sports doping laboratory at UCLA proved that athletes had begun using so-called designer steroids to beat drug tests.

The prosecutor said Arnold had wire-transferred $10,000 to a company in China to buy drugs that he then used to create designer steroids.

Arnold has a long-standing relationship with BALCO founder Victor Conte, who served four months in federal prison after pleading guilty to steroid-dealing charges last year. In court, Arnold admitted that he supplied the undetectable drugs to BALCO, which in turn provided them to the athletes. On his own, Arnold said, he also gave banned drugs to coaches.

Arnold is an amateur bodybuilder who has a degree in chemistry from the University of New Haven. After college, he went to work in the nutritional supplements industry and became known as "The Father of Prohormone" -- steroid-like drugs that weren't potent enough to be illegal under drug laws that applied at the time.

In 1998, Arnold won fame as the marketer of "andro," a prohormone that St. Louis Cardinals star Mark McGwire was using when he hit 70 home runs to break Roger Maris' single-season record of 61. The substance was outlawed in 2004.

According to an affidavit filed with the indictment, after "andro" Arnold began experimenting with creating designer drugs to beat steroid tests.

Initially, he synthesized Norbolethone, created by Wyeth Laboratories in Philadelphia to treat children with growth problems. Wyeth never marketed the drug because of fears that it might be toxic. In 2002, U.S. bicycle racer Tammy Thomas was caught using it and banned from her sport.

After that, court documents say, Arnold created "The Clear." It was based on a banned steroid called gestrinone. Arnold is suspected of altering the molecular structure of the drug to create a new steroid that, because it was unknown to science, didn't show on Olympic drug scans.

In 2003, elite track coach Trevor Graham obtained a sample of "The Clear" and gave it to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and eventually 13 elite U.S. athletes were banned from competition for their connection to BALCO drugs.

The government says Arnold also sold "The Clear" to Greek track coach Cristos Tzekos, coach of Kostas Kenteris and Ekaterina Thanou, elite sprinters who were banned from last year's Olympic games in Athens for ducking a drug test.